Cloppo and Cloppette. 1986 to 1991

Myself and Kristina Middleton formed this theatre company, a very succuessful venture. It began with Christmas parties for playschools, and went from there to major arena shows at fetes and festivals.
This was our first publicity sheet. It was obviously good, we did about 60 shows in the first Christmas period!

We wrote and directed all our shows, designed all our literature, and built literally everything. Costumes, puppets, backdrops, storage boxes, clown shoes....

Here is the start of 'The Surprise Party' show.

The Yellow Pages was a critical source of work for us. This small ad, 60mm square, cost £500 a year, a lot in 1986, but repaid itself 10 times over.

This was our next brochure, both indoor and outdoor shows. We developed two entirely new clown personas and costumes for the big stage, and had a zany Olympics themed show, complete with smoke, bangs and swimming pools!

Really my favourite costumes ever, including size 78 trainers, hand-made of course!

'Naughty Rat', and everybody's favourite, 'Daisy the Dragon'.

We got plenty of press...

And of course, fan mail! Where are you now, 'Claire'?

The shows we did together, and later myself solo, numbered in the thousands. On the strength of these, and work earlier in Rainbow Theatre, we earned the elusive and highly prized 'Actor's Equity Card', The UK exclusive actor's union.

And naturally, membership of 'Clown's International'.